In an occasional column, Dorothy Blundell takes a sideways look at the collections of The Bowes Museum where she is a volunteer

IT’S mid-summer and the crops have not yet been harvested. Blue skies are slowly being consumed by glowering, towering clouds... there’s a storm coming. In the foreground, we see the back of a small figure of a man on the track which bisects the field. He leans into the wind as he hurriedly makes his way home to the far off village. He’s carrying his umbrella for it’s not yet raining and the wind is strong. This evocative image (below) was painted by Joséphine Bowes and hangs in The Bowes Museum. It’s a careful composition and a good example of how she loved to represent big views. But there is also animation – see the man’s coat flapping behind him and how the crops and distant trees are swaying in the wind. Its title is Cornfield Near Calais, a town she would have stayed in with her husband, John, on occasion while preparing to cross the Channel or awaiting his return from England. In Joséphine’s artistic life, a parasol was part of her painting expedition kit. Along with canvasses, tubes of “couleur”, an easel and a mahlstick to steady the hand, a parasol was essential to shade the canvas and allow more accurate judgement of the tones in full sunlight. John usually accompanied her on her painting excusions. Perhaps he carried a “parapluie” in case of showers. Although, should wet weather ensue, it’s inconceivable he would have sung and danced à la Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain. Yet, in the metal collection, there is a silver figurine suggestive of the musical actor and the movie’s famous routine with an umbrella dance partner. Actually, the figurine is French, made in about 1840-50 and serves, rather prosaically, as a toothpick holder. The umbrella was invented more than 4,000 years ago to provide shade from the sun (in Latin, “umbra” means shadow). It’s been called many things from “bumbershoot”, “gamp” and “brolly” and, apart from being a portable shelter from the elements, its uses include cocktail drink garnish at one extreme and, at the other, a spy’s lethal weapon. Back in the museum’s ceramics galleries we find Paul Pry. He’s dressed in his characteristic stripey trousers and yellow top hat and he carries his trusty furled umbrella under his arm. Paul Pry was the eponymous hero of an 1825 farce by English playwright John Poole. The role was played by John Liston (c1776 – 1846), described as “a snub-nosed, red-cheeked and enormously broad-bottomed fellow”. Liston apparently had only to walk on stage for the audience to start laughing. The farce centres on a comical and mischievous fellow who is an interfering busybody. Everywhere he goes he “forgets” his umbrella – in truth, he leaves it behind so that he has an excuse to return... and eavesdrop. It all ends well, as Pry’s prying helps to catch more serious troublemakers. Thanks to the comic genius of Liston, he made Paul Pry seem real to the public, so much so that images of Liston as Pry appeared on signs, shops, warehouses, handkerchiefs, and snuff boxes. Porcelain factories produced figurines of Liston as Pry, such as the one in the museum which was made about 1820 by Staffordshire Pottery and is part of the Lady Ludlow Collection. Finally, let’s head back to the coast and Beach Scene at Low Tide (1867) which shows groups of people taking the air or promenading on the sand. It’s a cloudy day, but it’s not raining so maybe the parasols in evidence are superfluous in that sense. But then again, perhaps not in the artistic sense, for it is by Eugène Louis Boudin (1824-1898) who depicted this subject several times and used the accessory to help set the atmosphere of the scene. Boudin is best known for his beach scenes, seascapes and other landscapes and for capturing ever-changing weather conditions or the effects of light, depending on the time of day. He was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors and had a huge influence on the Impressionists, particularly his friend, Claude Monet. And in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is one of Monet’s famous works... Woman with a Parasol. The Bowes Museum is open daily 10am to 5pm. More details on the website: thebowesmuseum.org.uk